Comparison of Recovery After Halothane or Alfentanil Anaesthesia for Minor Surgery

Abstract

Recovery after anaesthesia was assessed using the Maddox Wing Test (MW), Critical Flicker Fusion Threshold (CFF), Choice Reaction Time (CRT), Line Analogue Rating Scales (LARS), a Tracking Test and a test of Semantic Memory in 44 patients who had undergone minor gynaecological surgery. The patients were allocated randomly to one of two groups and received either methohexitone, nitrous oxide, oxygen and halothane or methohexitone, alfentanil, nitrous oxide and oxygen. Immediate recovery was more rapid in the alfentanil group (P less than 0.01), but apnoea (P less than 0.05) and hiccups (P less than 0.05) were more common. Except for the CFF test, which showed the alfentanil patients to be less sedated than the halothane patients on the morning after anaesthesia (P less than 0.05), the results of the tests were similar in both groups and showed, initially, substantial impairment of psychomotor functions which gradually returned to baseline values. This comparison with halothane anaesthesia indicates that a technique using methohexitone and alfentanil is suitable for day-case surgery.

Anaesthesia for geriatric oesophagoscopy: isoflurane vs. alfentanil‐methohexitone vs. propofol

“…Combined, the mean times for recovery of breathing and laryngeal reflexes as well as for awakening and orientation were similar in the groups, and 2 h after the procedure all patients were sufficiently alert to be sent to the ward or to another hospital. These results compare favourably with results obtained with elderly patients undergoing longer propofol anaesthesias (7,15), middle-aged patients receiving metohexitone-alfentanil for a short procedure ( 16), or having an equally long isoflurane exposure (17) as did the present subjects. The short recovery times would hardly have been achieved had the previous experience on diminished needs for anaesthetics in old age not been appreciated (1, 2, 7 ) .…”

A double-blind, placebo- and positive-internal-controlled (alprazolam) investigation of the cognitive and psychomotor profile of pregabalin in healthy volunteers

“…This test battery has been shown to be sensitive to an extensive range of psychotropic substances having very different mechanisms of activity. These include benzodiazepines (Hindmarch et al 1990), anaesthetics (Moss et al 1987) anti-dementia agents (Fairweather et al 1993a), hypnotics (Hindmarch et al 1990), neuroleptics (Hindmarch and Tiplady 1994), antidepressants (Ridout and Hindmarch 2001), antihistamines (Shamsi and Hindmarch 2000), cognitive enhancers (Rigney et al 1999), nicotine (Parkin et al 1998), alcohol (Ridout et al 2003a), and caffeine . While the precise mechanism of pregabalin's pharmacological activity at the neuronal level continues to be elucidated, the use of a validated and sensitive objective test battery assessing a wide range of cognitive and psychomotor skills, together with a selfrating scale (Line Analogue Rating Scales, LARS), allows the pharmacodynamic properties of pregabalin 450 mg/day to be determined.…”

Psychomotor Recovery After Outpatient Anaesthesia: Individual Impairment May Be Masked by Group Analysis

“…A further methodological difficulty may attach to the negative results of Moss and his co-workers who used an SemRT in a battery of tests to investigate the recovery times from anaesthesia induced with methohexitone and maintained with either halothane or alfentanil [9]. While these researchers found no significant effect of each agent on retrieval from semantic memory, one should note that their patients were not tested until 2 h after the anaesthetic agents had been discontinued.…”